Lost a Friend I valued.

What do you mean grassing against your values. Protecting your child, whistle blowing, speaking up, highlighting behaviours that indicate a troubled child, you call these things ‘grassing’?

grassing is a term bullies use to stop people from informing others of the bullying. Don’t buy into that shit.

personally I think it was fine to tell the school, just so they could help if needed.

grassed? Is that what you call informing the school of completely inappropriate and potentially dangerous behaviour?
I feel sorry for your children if you have any

You weren’t “grassing”. You were actively safeguarding. Which is the right thing to do. Always.

You 100% did the right thing by informing school. It’s a very worrying thing to text child to child and needs flagging so support and help can be offered. School may know of other things goi g on and can join up the dots by having all relevant information.

YABU you have nothing to be sorry about you did exactly the right thing. If she was really a friend she would understand that and be disappointed with her own child not you.

Why are you focusing on this Queen Bee who clearly didn't value you instead of patting yourself on the back for standing up for your child?! She isn't your friend and she should rightly be mortified and apologetic. Fuck her.

I think your insinuation that her child might have been exposed to something so serious that you needed to inform the school is misplaced and has rubbed her up the wrong way.

Presumably this didn't happen in school.
Presumably over the years you've trusted her enough to look after your child alone.

Yet instead of just talking to her and using that conversation to broach approaching school together as a united front about the issues of online safety, you've told tales that would have seen her called into school, when between you both you had leady resolved the problem and the kids were friends again.

I think you've put more anxiety of "what if" on this than the grounded reality: that her kid sent yours a really shitty, bullying text message, on a device neither should have unsupervised access to, and instead of just dealing with it the school.have been dragged in and for what really?

You had every right to tell the school but why then even talk to the mum and try dealing with it out of school? Doubling down on it feels unnecessary.

I agree, there have been cases where a child has at least attempted if not committed suicide over this level of nasty bullying. The old sticks and stones... meme is bullshit, words can and do devestate people emotionally, that is why narcissists are so dangerous.

At the very least she’s probably mortified but who knows, it could be worse. They could be all sorts going on at home. Maybe she’s scared to pull on the thread. But it’s a big red flag… I hope she’s ok. But it’s not your fault and all you can do is reiterate that you are not judging and you are there if she wants to be friends.

You did nothing wrong. A similar thing happened to me. I was friends with a mum at school, went to her house for dinner a few times. She then became a bit distant and wouldn’t respond to my messages, didn’t really bother me. Then her daughter told my son she wouldn’t be friends with him anymore if he didn’t stop playing with the brown child (his best friend). I went straight to the school to tell them. I still would have told the school even if the mum hadn’t distanced herself from me, they need to know these things imo. I got a phone call from the mum shouting and swearing that I was a disgrace blah blah blah and we ignored each other from that day onward. You haven’t lost a friend, how I looked at it, I wouldn’t want to be friends with these kinds of people anyway.

But it’s not your fault. You did the right thing - by your child most importantly, but also hers. It’s on her if she takes a grudge against that.

shrug your shoulders and get on with life.

Some people are not as nice or as reasonable as they appear.

You did nothing wrong - her child used very strong and threatening words and the school should be keeping an eye on them.

Maybe view the end of that particular friendship as a lucky escape!

Any message from a peer telling a child to kill themselves should be reported to school. Huge safeguarding issue. Just because something happens outside of schools walls doesn’t mean it won’t have negative repercussions at school.

I am sorry it’s ended your friendship, it may just have been too mortifying for the other mum but to expect you not to tell the school wasn’t realistic of her. You may just need to take the end of the friendship on the chin. You did the right thing for your child.

OP fwiw given what you've described of the message I don't think you'd have been OTT to go to the police. She got off lightly that you only told the school in my view.

But you didn’t make her feel like that… her spiteful, unmanaged own kid has shown up her own failings - as a parent.

Keep your head high, shoulders back, do not drop your crown 👑

Good luck.

Gosh what a horrible thing to happen to your child! You did the right thing and frankly as she’s being so childish I’d probably let it slip to other mums what’s happened and take back the apology too…

OP hasn't described any sort of exclusion between the mums or the children. One mum not going out for 1-1 coffee dates with another mum isn't exclusion and neither is one child being told to stop child whatsapping and having playdates with another (particularly after conflict escalated to that level).

No one here has done anything wrong apart from the original text, which it sounds like has been dealt with appropriately. But it's sad to lose a friend, and it's ok for OP to be disappointed and wish things were different.

Sure, I was just talking about the feeling of hurt. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about I meant.

Erm….you’re not in the wrong here and don’t allow her to gaslight you into thinking you are and that you have to earn back her friendship.

This isn't really the same though. Because (a) the op did speak to the friend, and (b) it wasn't a misunderstanding, the awful behaviour was there in black and white in a text message.

Better finding out now - move on.....

Honestly she doesn't sound as nice as everyone thinks she is. She's excluding you and your child when you've done absolutely nothing wrong. Its not grassing to inform the school about worrying behaviour by children, it's safeguarding.

So I was sort of on the other side of this.

Someone I considered a friend went to the school with a social problem between our children. She never mentioned any problem to me before or since. It caused issues for my child during important exam time. My child hadn't done anything wrong exactly, it was more of a misunderstanding that needed a bit of mediation.

Anyway, I do understand why she went to the school but I was really hurt that she didn't say anything to me either before or after. I can't even look at her anymore without feeling upset. And she avoids me and looks shifty whenever I do see her.

Such a shame as we've been round each other's houses, out for dinner and drinks, gym classes together etc.

But to be clear, I think you did the right thing telling the school.

i dine the same thing when my son was primary school. Our relationship recovered over time, we say hi and check in from time to time. It hasn't reverted to how it was, I think she feels she can't trust me.

We all have a duty of care, I really feel I did what I did for the right reasons and believe you did too. Well done, doing the right things isn't easy and doesn't always feel very nice.